This is the latest on the major trend concerning the American media. Not a happy story. A democracy requires a healthy functional objective media to be healthy itself. The trend seems to be moving against this.
Click through to see the excellent clarifying graphs.
This adds up to a news industry that is more undermanned and unprepared to uncover stories, dig deep into emerging ones or to question information put into its hands. And findings from our new public opinion survey released in this report reveal that the public is taking notice. Nearly one-third of the respondents (31%) have deserted a news outlet because it no longer provides the news and information they had grown accustomed to.
Cyprus: Comment. International press outlets have provided detailed reporting on the so-called tax Cypriot leaders have proposed imposing on bank deposits to help pay for an international bailout. Cyprus is the fifth European Union country to request a bailout. The issues are complex and not relevant to this brief discussion.
NightWatch sees three threats in the situation.First is the breakdown of public confidence in the government and public financial institutions.That is already manifest in the run on ATMs. Banks on Cyprus were closed on the 18th, but the run on the banks should continue when they open on the 19th. There will not be enough cash to service the customers. Civil disorders should be expected.
The breakdown in confidence feeds the second threat which is the breakdown in respect for law and order. Cyprus is one step away from widespread rioting and a serious breakdown in public order. Rioting is likely when ordinary citizens conclude that they are powerless to protect what they have earned and no amount of effort on their part ensures their property rights.
The third threat is that the fear of losing everything will spread to other countries.
The below article, which appeared in the Atlantic last January, is a very important illustration of how domestic politics determine foreign policy. Bear in mind, the behaviour described below occurred when there was (and still is) a consensus among the pol-mil intellectuals that domestic politics stops at the water's edge and that foreign policy was and should be bi-partisan — the conclusion is a good analysis of where this kind of romantic intellectualization leads.
By Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic, 11 January 1913
EXTRACT
On that very first day of the ExComm meetings, McNamara provided a wider perspective on the missiles’ significance: “I’ll be quite frank. I don’t think there is a military problem here … This is a domestic, political problem.” In a 1987 interview, McNamara explained: “You have to remember that, right from the beginning, it was President Kennedy who said that it was politically unacceptable for us to leave those missile sites alone. He didn’t say militarily, he said politically.” What largely made the missiles politically unacceptable was Kennedy’s conspicuous and fervent hostility toward the Castro regime—a stance, Kennedy admitted at an ExComm meeting, that America’s European allies thought was “a fixation” and “slightly demented.”
China: The National People's Congress ended on the 17th with a press conference by Premier Li Keqiang. Before the closing, however, President Xi Jinping delivered his first address to the Congress. The central theme was The Chinese Dream.
Eight of the 17 paragraphs of the text were devoted to, or carried forward the application of, the dream. One of them reiterated the guidance Xi gave to the People's Liberation Army delegates on the 11th: obey the party, win wars and behave well.
Xi introduced the dream immediately after four paragraphs of thanks and preamble. The concluding, sentence of the second paragraph of the introduction is significant.
“Today, our people's republic is standing on the East of the world with a spirited posture.”
Comment: The point is that Xi did not describe China's posture as rising, but as standing. The period of rising has ended.
After the fourth paragraph of introduction, Xi began the discussion and for the Chinese dream.
TIM PALMER: In China the fallout is still being felt from an open rebellion over air pollution at the country's annual session of parliament.
It was a dramatic shift for a Congress that's normally seen as no more than a rubber stamp.
Sensing a growing environmental crisis, a third of the delegates rejected a key anti-pollution measure.
Meanwhile China analysts are now expecting major economic reforms from the new administration in Beijing after premier Li Keqiang declared that more sections of the economy needed to be handed over to private enterprise.
China correspondent Stephen McDonell has been covering the closing stages of the National People's Congress in Beijing.
(Ceremonial music)
STEPHEN MCDONELL: China's annual session of parliament, the National People's Congress, has closed with plenty of big vision from the country's new generation of leaders.
Xi Jinping told some 3,000 delegates what an honour it was for him to be president and he was talking up the so-called “China dream”.
(Sound of Xi Jingping speaking)
“China is a great nation with great creativity,” he said, “We created this Chinese culture and we will be able to expand our path towards Chinese development.”
But a third of the delegates listening to him had just staged a large revolt on the floor of the Great Hall of the People over pollution.
When it came time to endorse the members of a key committee overseeing environmental protection and resource conservation, 850 delegates voted no and 120 abstained.
“Stop The Cyborgs” is a new site that attempts to bring a balanced trepidation to the unbalanced idea that we'll all be walking round with Google's outer brain strapped to our faces.
The opposition will congregate in dark corners.
They will whisper with their mouths, while their eyes will scan the room for spies wearing strange spectacles.
The spies will likely be men. How many women would really like to waft down the street wearing Google Glass?
It won't be easy. Once you've been cybernated, there's no turning back. Which is why the refuseniks are already meeting in shaded corners of the Web.
One site is called “Stop The Cyborgs.” It claims to be “fighting the algorithmic future one bit at a time.”
It's going to take a lot of bitty fighting, but the people behind this site — they're naturally anonymous, in an attempt to stop Google spying on them — say they're fighting Google Glass in particular.
They say that it will herald a world in which “privacy is impossible and corporate control total.”
Some would say that, thanks to Googlies and other bright, deluded sparks, we're there already. The Lord and Master Zuckerberg explained to us a long time ago that he knows us better than we do and that we don't actually want privacy at all.
Still, the people behind this anti-cyborg movement claim that there's no way you'll ever know that someone wearing Google Glass is recording your every word and movement.
There's no way of even knowing if someone else is recording you through their glasses from somewhere in the cloud.
And how are we, whose egos are already more fragile than a porcelain potty, supposed to feel when we know that a glasses-wearer has one eye on us and another on our Klout score or teenage sexting pictures?
The site explains: “Gradually people will stop acting as autonomous individuals, when making decisions and interacting with others, and instead become mere sensor/effector nodes of a global network.”
“Inspired in part by the open source movement, public spaces are emerging where people congregate to share ideas, make cool projects, teach, and brainstorm with collaborators on everything from coding to cooking. With no leaders, they have one rule: “Be excellent to each other.” Take a tour of the hackerspace Noisebridge, located in the heart of San Francisco's Mission District, with co-founder Mitch Altman.”
With educational institutions failing to provide young-people with the information and skills they need to succeed in an ever-evolving planetary-landscape, the hackerspace movement is helping to fill the void. Kids are coming out of schools ignorant, disempowered, lost, and disinterested. Entrepreneurial spirit and constructive risk-taking are in their death-throws as a result. Alternative educational/cultural spaces are needed now more than ever to rejuvenate this untapped generation of human potential.
This is the latest on the major trend concerning the American media. Not a happy story. A democracy requires a healthy functional objective media to be healthy itself. The trend seems to be moving against this.
